Invention
What follows is a half-baked thought experiment intended to prompt contemplation of a broader scope.
Try not to take it too seriously.
I see a lot of "thinking inside the box" in this thread.
Let us say, for the sake of discussion, that I invent a light, fast, reusable, highly maneuverable spacecraft. Something with the ability to take off from wherever, land wherever, and haul a payload of ten tons or so. Heck, I might name it
Serenity, if I'm in the mood.
It is entirely my creation. Such a feat is not that far outside the realm of possibility in today's technological context. We already have viable examples of privately built spacecraft, this is simply an extrapolation of that.
Let's just pause there for a moment.
My ship. I own it. I own all the technology in it. Okay? It's mine.
With this ship, I can take off from anywhere, hit a high or low orbit, do whatever it is I want to do there, and land wherever I want.
Now, what is immediately clear to the military mind is that I have achieved a level of mobility that far outstrips any kind of existing military transportation. Their immediate worry becomes that I will have the means to deliver ordnance or forces on target unimpeded by any earth-bound air or naval force.
They would immediately lobby Congress and the Oval Office to
a) confiscate the technology, and
b) outlaw its use by civilians.
And why would that be?
The simple answer is that they are intensely jealous of their monopoly on force, their monopoly on the ability to wage war. In their world, it is simply unacceptable that someone -- a plain, ordinary non-governmental someone -- should have any degree of power or mobility that rivals theirs.
They have become accustomed to "owning all the guns," so to speak, and in their world, such power and mobility should only be in the hands of
people whom they trust.
And we'll pause for a moment on that one, too.
Governments (and militaries) go to some lengths to ensure that they have a force monopoly.
When governments actually
achieve a force monopoly, history tells us that the outcomes -- for the population at large -- are generally heinous.
Now, my little spaceship, in its original configuration, doesn't even sport a cannon. No laser, no phaser, no proton torpedoes, and yet dot-gov and its minions are decidedly uncomfortable with the private ownership of such mobility. They're going to do their level best to "acquire" this thing and to ban private ownership of it.
They will use laws, regulations, executive orders, or just brute force.
Have a read through the classifications of weapons regulated by the ATF, and notice that they have a neat catch-all called "destructive device" which they can, at will, use as a label for anything someone invents that's far enough outside the box for what's called "arms" today.
I'm sure there's a nice catch-all somewhere in a law or regulation that authorizes -- or can be "interpreted" to authorize -- the dot-gov to seize something that renders their whole air force and navy irrelevant, even without any armament or ordnance aboard.
So, there's a point here . . .
As others have already pointed out, repeatedly, the original notion of "keep and bear arms" was to give the citizenry parity with whatever an army might have.
The absurd case (or is it?) is the A-bomb case: dot-gov has those, so hey, so should the people. I would submit that this is, in fact, the absurd case, since the use of A-bombs on home soil would be a self-defeating application. The A-bomb is the ultimate indiscriminate weapon. Any government willing to use them to put down a revolt should have already been taken down by other means. So, in the interest of sanity, we'll exclude the A-bomb from the discussion.
Let's go back to the phrase "
people they can trust."
The dot-gov and its minions issue security clearances to . . . people they can trust.
People
they can trust.
And yet, what is it we observe in government? Unbridled abuse of power, pervasive corruption, and arbitrary oppression of selected segments of the population. It's a matter of degree, of course, but you have to appreciate the irony that the largest abuser of power, the outfit most likely to enact treaties and trade agreements that compromise domestic prosperity is the government itself. And yet they are the ones who issue "security clearances" to those they can trust.
And they are the ones who lay claim to a force monopoly. (They're also the folks to get to confine your mobility by "authorizing" your travel outside the country.)
And yet that was never the original intent of our founders.
When government fears the people, there is liberty.
So the original premise in the thread has to do with the appropriate "limits" on the Second Amendment, but an underlying assumption is that government is in charge.
I've got a space ship that puts me totally beyond the reach of the government force monopoly.
I can guarantee you that they will not let that go unchallenged.
Because
it is only RIGHT that government control ultimate force and ultimate mobility.
So here's my suggestion for a "metric" of how far the Second Amendment goes:
that the private citizen shall be empowered to own and deploy whatever level of arms and transport is required to make government entirely uncomfortable with the idea of ever meeting the citizenry in open battle.
Governments arm themselves sufficient to constitute a deterrent to hostile nations.
It is only fitting that the citizens arm themselves sufficient to constitute a deterrent to a hostile government.
The rest is easy. Just figure out what kind of hardware that is, and there you go!
(Oh, and BTW, if you don't like the spaceship idea, let's invent a communications device that doesn't depend on any existing infrastructure at all, has unlimited range, uses no regulate-able spectrum, and is undetectable by any existing intercept technology. Happy now?)
